


Letting Go and Holding On

by HobbitSpaceCase



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Sam!Cap occurs, all of this takes place after IW, bucky has ptsd, but Bucky is especially bad at talking about feelings, everyone is bad at talking about feeling, i have no idea how to tag this, or dealing with feelings, or having feelings, snarky not-friends to lovers, the major character death occurs before the story starts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-09
Updated: 2017-08-09
Packaged: 2018-12-13 08:40:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11756133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HobbitSpaceCase/pseuds/HobbitSpaceCase
Summary: Steve dies.  Bucky learns how to be a person again.  He'd say it's harder than it looks, but he hasn't seen clearly enough in a long time to make any kind of judgements like that.





	Letting Go and Holding On

**Author's Note:**

> There are a few (fairly brief) mentions of suicidal ideation from Bucky. If that will bother you, I suggest reading with caution or hitting the back button now.

Bucky wakes from the ice to Sam Wilson’s unsmiling face. That’s the first indication that something is wrong.

The sick pull in his stomach tells him Wilson’s news before the man even opens his mouth, eyes turned to the ground like he can’t bear to look Steve’s old pal in the face when he hands off the news of Steve’s death while Bucky slept like a coward. Bucky knows Wilson must be hurting something fierce. After all, he’s the one who knows Steve best in this new century. The friend who didn’t put a few bullets in his gut, abandon him, drag him into trouble, and then abandon him again for the last time.

“Thanks for telling me,” Bucky grits out, and it turns out he can’t look at Wilson’s face either as he offers the only empty words that don’t stick in his throat like broken glass.

Wilson disappears shortly after, and Bucky looses himself in the slowest, gentlest swarm of medical staff he’s ever experienced. He hardly remembers how he answers their questions, hardly remembers anything before they are telling him that his mind should be fixed, his triggers cleared away like so much mental cobwebbing too little too late to matter. Only a few hours later, he is packed off to a room more extravagant than anything Bucky’s ever had in his life before this moment.

Heavy curtains cover a window looking out on heavy jungle and the distant gleam of Wakandan rooftops breaking through the trees. A bed that could hold half a dozen people sits in the middle of the room, made up in sheets so soft they flow more like water against his fingers than fabric. Bucky wonders briefly if he’s meant to share his bed with anyone, but that is a silly thought. There is only furniture in the room for a single person: one closet, one chest of drawers, one beautiful mahogany desk with a single chair. There are even clothes in the closet, perfectly fitted to Bucky. He lies down on the bed and wonders if he should cry. Steve is gone forever, and he has taken Bucky’s heart with him to the grave. He falls asleep with dry eyes, laying atop the covers as the ceiling blurs to darkness and eventually disappears to dreams.

The next days melt together. Hot jungle air drowns his voice in his lungs when King T’Challa tells him he is welcome to stay in Wakanda for as long as he wishes. The king doesn’t call him on it when he nods, retreats, and doesn’t leave his room again for some time. There is even a bathroom in his room, through the door he thought was a second closet but instead holds a tub big enough to hold even the scared and aching shell he calls his body. He has no need to leave, when even meals show up at his door if he forces enough breath from his body to ask.

After a week, his traitorous legs carry him outside anyway. There is a garden he can see from his window, if he angles his head right. Though it takes him an hour to get there, what with the unfamiliar twists and turns of the Wakandan palace, and the extra turns he takes to avoid running into others, it’s worth it when he arrives. The garden is quiet, with stone paths running like small rivers into and away from each other, winding through carefully cultivated trees stretching overhead and shading out the heavy weight of the sun, bases ringed about with dark green ferns with serrated leaves like the knives he doesn't carry anymore. Colorful sprays of African violets leap from the edges of the paths at intervals like water from a brook. The overall impression is isolated and peaceful. It's beautiful. The sky stretches stark and blue between the trees above him, the paths wind grey beneath his feet, and he thinks if he breathes deep enough the jungle air might choke the breath from his lungs and drown him.

Steve drowned, once. And then he came back to life from that one, the stubborn cuss. Maybe Bucky would be luckier than Steve.

He is losing his touch. His feet stutter and halt at the sight of King T’Challa around the next bend. The king sits on an ornate bench with his head tipped towards the sun, eyes closed in a mockery of sleep. Those eyes are dark and far too knowing when they open and turn on Bucky, but their uncomfortable intensity only lasts a moment before the king smiles, speaks.

“It is good to see you outside, Mr. Barnes,” he says, voice slow and dark like molasses. Bucky breathes deep and drowns the sharp edges of words that will not come. He stands in silence for minutes that could be days for the way they stretch at the seams, before the king stands as well.

“If you wish it,” the king says, “I would be happy to offer you Wakanda’s expertise in replacing your arm. You would, of course, have as much say as you wished in its construction.” He regards Bucky with dark eyes that are back to seeing too much. “Steve also told me,” he says, ignoring the way Bucky’s whole body rocks back at the name, “the last time he was here, that you were something of a mechanic before your war. If you are uncertain, I’d be happy to show you to my palace workshops before you make any decisions.”

It takes long moments for Bucky to pull the words from beneath the thundering beat of his broken heart. “Thank you, Your Majesty,” he says, while the king patiently waits.

“Please,” he says, another quicksilver smile passing over his face, “Call me T’Challa.”

T’Challa’s workshops, Bucky is forced to admit, are magnificent. He can easily lose himself in them for as long as he wishes, and so he does.

oOo

The next time Bucky sees Wilson, he’s got a new vibranium arm courtesy of T’Challa’s best engineers. The black matte metal is quieter than his old arm, doesn’t make a sound as he clenches his fist at the sight of Wilson striding into the Wakandan palace wearing _Steve’s suit_ beneath his wingpack, carrying _Steve’s shield_.

“This is a new look,” he says, unable to hide the bitterness in his voice, gesturing at Sam’s getup. Sam startles, then blushes even as he glares.

“It wasn’t exactly my choice,” Sam says, and he still refuses to meet Bucky’s eyes. “Fury asked me to take up Cap’s mantle. Figured I could do some good with it, so I agreed.”

Their staring match is interrupted only by the arrival of T’Challa, who takes one look at the two glaring soldiers and rolls his eyes, striding between them without a second thought for his own safety. “If you two are going to insist on fighting like children, you can do it when there is not an emergency threatening the safety of the world.” Only after T’Challa’s words does Bucky realize that he’s wearing the Black Panther suit. “I will be gone for at least a week,” the King says, having captured Bucky’s attention. “You are still welcome to the use of my lab while I am away.” A small smile quirks his lips before his features smooth once more into seriousness.

Bucky finds he is surprisingly anxious at the thought of T’Challa and Wilson off on some likely dangerous superhero mission. A mission without Steve to guard them, to make the stupid hero plays that he’d always miraculously walked away from, up until he didn’t. He’s not anxious enough to enquire as to the nature of the mission, but it stays buzzing beneath his skin all night as he works on a new Quinjet engine alongside T’Challa’s best engineer, his sister Shuri, struck with the same restless insomnia as Bucky while her brother goes to war.

T’Challa returns exactly a week later. He steps off the ramp of a black Quinjet supporting a bloody figure in a red, white, and blue suit that has Bucky reacting without thinking.

“Steve,” Bucky blurts, stilling in his walk around the palace’s front gardens. He takes a single step forward before the figure’s head tips up and reality crashes back down. Sam Wilson’s eyes are unfocused, and T’Challa ignores Bucky’s slip-up as he is swarmed by medical personal who take Sam Wilson from their King with gentle hands and rapid words. Bucky barely notices Shuri slipping past everyone to envelope her brother in a hug.

He doesn’t know why his feet carry him after Wilson, instead of towards T’Challa for an explanation. All he can focus on are the tears in the Captain America suit and the red that stains the ragged edges. His feet move without his mind’s permission, until he is sinking into a chair next to a bed in the palace hospital, legs folding as though suddenly incapable of carrying his weight.

Sam was at Steve’s side when Bucky wasn’t. Now it is Bucky’s turn to return a favor that Steve cannot.

“Didn’t expect to see you hovering over my bed,” a weak voice says hours later, as Bucky struggles not to nod off in sleep.

“Your face looks like shit,” Bucky says back, glancing sideways at Wilson.

Wilson coughs a laugh, and then just coughs, hacking, ugly things that have Bucky darting for a glass of water and a nurse. “I’m fine,” he says, trying to wave the nurse away with a bandaged arm, though the grimace of pain that flashes over his face gives the lie to his words.

“My face brings all the boys to the yard,” Wilson says after the nurse has gone. Bucky snorts.

“In your dreams,” he says, but the insult is ruined when he realizes that Wilson is already dreaming.

Later, when Wilson is high enough on morphine to forget Bucky’s words if he decides to go back on them, he whispers to the room, “I should be out there, with you.” Wilson giggles, head flopping in Bucky’s direction.

“Yeah, you should be, you fuckin’ asshole,” he slurs. “No excuse for you sittin’ around on that perky ass o’ yours when I’m out risking my pretty behind in your boyfriend’s old clothes.”

Sam Wilson on morphine, Bucky decides, is a grade A asshole with less tact than Steve on a bad day. This bit of information has no business making him smile. It is, therefore, probably nothing more than leftover HYDRA conditioning that has his lips turning up as he turns his head away and flips Sam off with the metal arm.

oOo

Joining the rogue Avengers was a terrible fucking plan.

Fuck Sam Wilson and his great fucking memory.

The metal arm is steady, but the flesh hand won’t stop _fucking_ trembling. Wilson cuts through the air, doing flips like a fucking Pitt Special in an air show, but there are too many guys on the ground. Too many guys, and the famous Winter Soldier can’t get control of his _fucking arm_. If he tries to fucking shoot he’s as likely to kill Steve’s best friend as he is to save him. Bucky should fucking shoot himself if he can’t get his act together.

Wilson swoops low, the distant sound of his guns putting holes in the enemies Bucky can’t fucking shoot alternately loud and muffled in his ears, and his vision turns in sickening circles that could rival Wilson’s aerobatics. Voices are yelling through his com, beating against his eardrums in unintelligible waves. As he rips the com from his ear, Wilson banks sharply left and an inhuman roar shakes the entire compound, all the way out to the bushes Bucky’s hiding in. The roar grows louder and louder, till the green mass of the hulk hits the ground with a sound like a thunderclap.

Reinforcements have arrived. Bucky leaves his gun behind when he bolts.

oOo

“James! James! Bucky!”

Bucky blinks back the wetness glistening in his eyes, blurring the world into something soft and shimmering. “Hey man, it’s ok.” Wilson is crouching next to him, one hand on Bucky’s back, solid and warm. Wilson’s alive, and Bucky wants to cry with relief. He also just wants to cry (the wet tracks on his face would claim he already is crying). The place where Sam touches him is the one point on his body that isn’t roiling with rage and the sickening slide of shame through his veins. Sam deserves nicer things than babysitting the ruined shell of Steve’s old pal. Sam deserves to have Steve back. Bucky doesn’t deserve shit.

Instead, Bucky pukes all over Sam’s shoes.

“Hey,” Sam Wilson says again, “It’s alright, man. I’m just glad you didn’t run too far, or we might’ve had a hell of a time finding you in this godawful excuse for a forest.”

“It shoulda been me,” Bucky whispers, words long drowned resurfacing to drip from his mouth in a stream he can’t stop any more than he could stop the tides. “It shoulda been me who died, not Steve. Steve was always better, and I tried to have your back for him but I can’t, I can’t. It shoulda fucking been me. I shoulda been there for him, and it shoulda been _me_.”

Sam Wilson doesn’t speak till he’s done, gives him time after the words stop pouring out to gasp his breath back into his chest, swallowing down god knows what other confessions might rip their way free from his bloodstained soul. The air here is drier than Wakanda; all it would take is a match to burn all his broken parts to ash.

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

Bucky’s been falling for over 70 years. He thinks it’s about time he hit rock bottom.

Sam Wilson sits silently at Bucky’s side on the Quinjet back to Wakanda. The Americans who brought the Hulk in had wanted to keep both Bucky and Sam Wilson for questioning, until T’Challa stepped smoothly in front of them, black helmet held loosely under one arm.

“Sam Wilson and James Barnes are needed back in Wakanda,” he said, voice even and full of self-assurance Bucky’d never had, even as a dumbass kid in Brooklyn who thought love could make him and his best pal invincible, if he just loved hard enough. “I’m afraid you’ll have to postpone your interrogation.” And just like that, the two were bundled up the Quinjet ramp, leaving dumbstruck US Agents milling about on the ground trying to figure out what to say to their superiors when they got home.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says to the floor when they’re ten thousand feet above the ground and his stomach swoops with the words he can imagine dropping the floor and falling, falling, falling down. Sam leans into him, pressing their shoulders together, and doesn’t reply.

“I miss him too,” Sam offers later, in front of Bucky’s door. “It never gets easier, seeing ‘em fall when there’s nothing you can do.”

Bucky thinks of snow and ice and Steve’s ashen face falling away above him. He thinks of Sam's silver wings sweeping the air as his arm trembles too much to shoot. “No,” he agrees. “It doesn’t.”

“Wanna come in?” he asks, surprising himself as his useless flesh arm swings around to his door. It’s even more surprising when Sam says yes.

Once the damn breaks, it’s easy to share stories about Steve with Sam Wilson, and that is perhaps the most surprising thing of all that day. They talk and talk, wringing out their pain into the Wakandan air, till laughter replaces the tears and Bucky realizes that Sam’s eyes sparkle when he smiles.

Those eyes sparkle when he kisses, too.

Bucky doesn’t know if he’s doing the right thing, doesn’t know what regrets the light of morning will bring, but he thinks Sam feels the same way and hasn’t left yet, and that’s good enough. The next day isn’t promised to anyone, and Bucky thinks it’s high time he let himself have something he wanted now.


End file.
